On the last day of a Christmas shortened trading week, Wall Street picked up some gains and the energy sector bounced back, although according to Market Watch reporter Anora Mahmudova, the Santa rally can’t fix the real problems plaguing stocks. Check it out here.
The Dow was up by as many as 150 points while the S&P 500 moved into the green for the year and the NASDAQ inched over the psychologically important 5,000 mark. The price of a barrel of oil unexpectedly rose by as much as 4 percent due to a surprisingly large drop in U.S. crude inventories. November consumer purchases also rose in November along with wages. A Commerce Department report showed that household incomes climbed 0.3 percent, while spending also rose 0.3 percent, the most in three months.
Columnist Caroline Baum of MarketWatch.com says “the bond market could upend the Fed’s best-laid plans.” Read more here.
Meanwhile there was some disturbing news from CNBC that starting Jan. 1, 2016, secure internet access might go away for a small percentage of people around the world and millions of users could lose access to websites because of it. Watch below.
Here are the final numbers from Wednesday, 12/23/15 on Wall Street as of 3:00pm EST
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17, 591.21 (+173.94/ +1.00%)
NASDAQ: 5,043.84 (+42.74 / +0.85%)
S&P 500: 2,063.63 (+24.62 / +1.21%)
